When Vitalik Stops Updating His Blog to Write Science Fiction
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
When Vitalik Stops Updating His Blog to Write Science Fiction
Foundation’s 8 Members Depart, ETH Barely Holds Above $2,000—Is the Founder Writing a Novel?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Claude, TechFlow
TechFlow Editorial Note: On May 27, Vitalik Buterin announced on Farcaster his suspension of long-form blog writing, shifting instead to authoring a science fiction novel centered on decentralized governance—two chapters of which have already been completed.
The novel constructs a fictional nation named “Veridia,” where mechanisms such as quadratic voting, privacy-preserving audits, and AI-assisted decision-making operate. The timing of this pivot is intriguing: at least nine core members of the Ethereum Foundation have departed by 2026; ETH’s price has fallen below the $2,100 threshold; and just three days earlier, Vitalik had declared the Foundation would become a “smaller ship.”
Vitalik, Ethereum’s founder, has stopped writing technical blogs—and started writing fiction…
On May 27, Vitalik Buterin posted a brief statement on Farcaster: “Instead of continuing with regular blog posts, I’ve decided to try writing some science fiction about decentralized governance,” linking to the first and second chapters, now live on his personal website.
According to BeInCrypto’s report on May 27, this marks a rare formal shift in Buterin’s public writing career.
Over the past decade, his long-form essays have essentially served as first-hand documentation of Ethereum’s intellectual evolution—covering nearly every core topic, from Layer-2 scaling and DAO governance to quadratic voting. Now, he chooses to embed these ideas within fictional narrative rather than continue producing EIP-style technical arguments.
This choice itself isn’t surprising—but the timing inevitably invites speculation:
Just three days earlier, he published a lengthy thread on X defending the Foundation’s personnel turbulence; two weeks prior, the Protocol Team’s core leadership collectively exited; and ETH’s price has dropped over 57% since peaking near $5,000 in August 2025.
“Veridia” in the Novel: Vitalik’s Ideal Governance System
We asked an AI to rapidly read through the two completed chapters to see what Vitalik is really trying to convey.
The story unfolds in Veridia, a fictional nation. The protagonist, Gladias, is an apprentice member of the “Order of Steering”—Veridia’s central governing body, tasked with maintaining sophisticated rubrics for taxation and subsidy assessments, replacing traditional legal prohibitions.
Veridia’s governance logic is explicit: it almost never directly bans anything; its criminal code is extremely minimal. Instead, it deploys a social governance system driven by tax-rate incentives. A band wishing to perform violent songs won’t be arrested—but may be assigned to a higher tax bracket.
The mechanics of this system merit closer examination, as they amount almost verbatim to a fictionalized rendering of Vitalik’s technical blog posts over recent years:
The “Order of Steering” comprises three roles. “Keepers” define and update the tax assessment rubrics; “Sentinels” audit individual enterprises’ classifications—nine-person panels are cryptographically randomized into three subgroups, each conducting independent reviews before voting, with the median result adopted; “Acolytes” serve as backups to Keepers and Sentinels, performing lower-priority audits, continuously scored by the system, with only the top 10% eligible for promotion.
Privacy protection forms the foundational logic of the entire system. Members of the Order wear standardized “privacy robes” to conceal identity, and disclosing audit assignments is strictly prohibited. Anyone may submit guesses about members’ identities via a decentralized cryptographic network—if correct, the exposed member forfeits salary, while the whistleblower receives half as a bounty. This mechanism aims to prevent bribery and external influence.
In Chapter One, the protagonist also participates in another form of public governance: public aesthetic scoring. Citizens are randomly assigned to evaluate public goods (e.g., advertisements on buses) using sliders. Here appears Vitalik’s long-favored quadratic voting: all votes are automatically normalized so that each voter’s average score equals zero and variance equals one—extreme votes compress their influence on other issues. As stated verbatim in the novel, this mechanism is mathematically provable as optimal: voting intensity should precisely match the strength of one’s genuine sentiment—neither more nor less.
Chapter Two shifts to Dzego, an underground educational community. Two students traverse the city to attend physics class. Dzego’s survival strategy is summarized in four words: “rooted, headless”—rooted locally, with no centralized leadership. Classroom locations are decrypted and revealed via encrypted broadcast shortly before class begins; teaching venues are lined with signal-blocking foil; and cryptographic proof systems undergo frequent, security-upgraded rotations.
What’s Written Into Fiction Is What Can’t Be Pushed Forward in Reality
Viewed in isolation, the novel reads as a meticulously crafted work of governance-oriented science fiction. Yet placed against Ethereum’s 2026 context, the parallels become starkly clear.
Veridia’s “Order of Steering” is a decentralized, anonymous, cryptography-protected governing body—devoid of singular authority, with members promoted solely by merit-based ranking. In contrast, the real-world Ethereum Foundation (EF) experienced its most severe personnel exodus since inception in 2026.
Per CoinDesk’s May 18 report and Unchained’s May 20 analysis, at least nine senior contributors have either left or announced imminent departure from the Foundation in 2026 alone. Co-Executive Director Tomasz Stańczak resigned in February after serving less than a year; Josh Stark, Head of Operations and Communications, departed in March after seven years with the Foundation; Trent Van Epps, founder of the Protocol Guild, likewise exited in April.
May brought even more concentrated disruption.
Tim Beiko and Barnabé Monnot, co-leads of the Protocol Cluster, stepped down simultaneously; Alex Stokes entered indefinite leave. Within the following week, Carl Beek—a founding contributor to the Beacon Chain who served for seven years—and Julian Ma, lead author of the censorship-resistance mechanism FOCIL (EIP-7805), both announced resignations.
On May 24—three days before announcing the novel—Vitalik published a long post on X addressing this personnel storm. He likened the Foundation to “a smaller ship,” stating it will focus on the CROPS framework (Censorship-resistance, Resistance to centralization pressure, Openness, Privacy, Security), acknowledging that the Foundation’s original technical mission was largely complete by 2022 and that it is now transitioning from an expansionary organization to a sustainability-oriented one.
He also revealed that 90% of his net worth remains in ETH, and that the Foundation holds only 0.16% of total ETH supply—valued at approximately $408 million.
“The Foundation chooses to pursue sustainability—not breadth—with its remaining resources. Yes, that means selling less ETH,” Vitalik wrote. Bastian Aue, interim Co-Executive Director (who assumed the role in February following Stańczak’s departure), is overseeing this transition.
Compare this statement with Veridia’s governance system depicted in the novel: cryptography-guaranteed decentralized auditing, mathematically provable quadratic voting, and AI-augmented—but not AI-replacing—human judgment in evaluation systems.
In reality, however, the Foundation can’t even retain its core R&D staff—the focus of governance discussions has shifted to “Who’s leaving?” and “Why?”
Community Reaction: The Novel Deserves Serious Reading—But Its Timing Evokes Mixed Feelings
Regarding Vitalik’s turn to science fiction, the community response has been relatively positive. crypto.news’ May 27 commentary observed that Buterin is effectively migrating his thinking on decentralized governance—from white papers and blog formats—into speculative storytelling, using fictional worlds to test coordination, incentive, and power-distribution problems previously explored in academic papers.
BeInCrypto’s analysis notes that Vitalik has long advocated quadratic voting and pluralistic mechanisms to dilute the influence of large token holders. The narrative format gives him space to dramatize these mechanisms within fictional cities and crisis scenarios.
His recent characterization of the Foundation as “just one node among many” also explains why this announcement appeared on Farcaster—not on centralized social platforms.
Yet sharper critiques exist.
At a moment when the Foundation has just lost nearly its entire Protocol Team leadership, the founder’s allocation of time itself sends a signal. Vitalik himself laid groundwork for this in his May 24 X thread—he explicitly stated his internal authority at the Foundation will continue shrinking: “This is exactly what I want,” he wrote, noting the transition is being executed by Bastian Aue, not himself.
From this perspective, writing science fiction serves as a declaration of identity shift: he is no longer the Foundation’s central executor, but rather a thought node within the broader Ethereum ecosystem.
This aligns perfectly with Veridia’s governance philosophy—everything unfolding exactly as intended.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
深潮TechFlow
